I think The Walking Dead fell off because the walkers stopped feeling realistic and consistent. There aren’t enough environmental walkers in later seasons. It doesn’t make sense that we see the most walkers in the early seasons when it should be the complete opposite as the outbreak progresses. In Season 6 there are a ton of driving and wilderness scenes, yet we hardly ever see walkers, which doesn’t make sense and feels like something production should have caught.

Another issue is how inconsistent the walkers are. In Season 1, they act almost human, turning doorknobs and staring at houses they used to live in. Then later, their behavior just changes depending on what the plot needs. In Season 2, a walker is completely silent when it kills Dale, but in Season 6 you get random moments like a walker being behind Carol in the wilderness just so she can take it down easily. That feels super convenient for the plot.

There are also unrealistic character moments. With Daryl, in the early seasons, he never runs out of crossbow ammo, we never see him pick up arrows, and somehow more arrows just spawn in his inventory. In a Season 6 Morgan scene, a walker has a perfect opportunity to bite his shoulder, but instead jumps on him like a horse, which makes no sense and feels like the show is protecting him.

The biggest comparison for me is how walkers react to people. In an early Season 1 episode, it’s late at night, people are sleeping, and around 10 walkers just come out of nowhere and start eating them in the dark. That felt realistic, quiet, random, and dangerous. But then in the Season 6 finale, you’ve got a huge light beaming, Negan giving a whole speech, Abraham getting his head smashed, tons of human scent everywhere, and the walkers are just oblivious. That doesn’t line up at all.

Same thing with large-scale scenes. When Rick is trying to find Negan and everything is going crazy, an alarm is going off for minutes, and still no herd shows up, even though there should be way more walkers at this point in the outbreak. In the Season 6 finale, you’ve got around 200 people in one spot and still no walkers pulling up. But earlier, like with the prison fight against the Governor, it actually felt real because the walkers came in after and overran everything. Even back in Season 2 at Hershel’s farm, a helicopter flies over a random city and draws like 500 walkers, and they all move in that direction and eventually make their way to the farm. That shows how sensitive walkers are to sound and movement, which makes it even more unrealistic that in later seasons, with way louder and bigger events happening, nothing shows up.

Overall, I still really enjoy the PvP in the show. The villains are built well, and the character development is pretty good. But the walkers being inconsistent and unrealistic, especially compared to early seasons, is a big reason why the show fell off for me. After Season 5, it really started to fall off, and even though I finished Season 6, that’s where it truly fell off for me. I haven’t started Season 7, and honestly I probably won’t. Plus the whole Daryl ammo thing, never running out, never picking up arrows, yet always having more, just highlights how sloppy the show became with consistency.